A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

@neilasaurus@mastodon.social

I think we're creeping up on a point I'm trying to state in my own completely ineloquent way, and it's really unpopular amongst liberals.

Yes, in the end it's mostly just moving people who already had a certain belief around the country and concentrating them even more in Florida, in this case. What does that leave you with in Florida? A government that liberals, personally, hate and *is* actually based on a lot of hate itself. But it's a representative government of the people, right? DeSantis didn't foment a coup. He's insanely popular across the state and him and his ideas are only becoming more popular over the last few years. 10 years ago saying that someone with his beliefs would have won Hillsborough county would have been laughed at, right?

But here we are, and it's not being honestly discussed amongst liberals if the discussion is "People will rise up across Florida and stop this madness!" They don't think it's madness.

@neilasaurus@mastodon.social

I understand. It's a lot of stuff once you start trying to talk about it all. I'm from out west originally and most of my oldest friends live in California, Oregon and Washington and I'm honestly frustrated because I get a lot of "Oh I'm sure it's not really like that" or "If that's what they're really doing people will step up and stop it" and I log on here and see a lot of the same rhetoric on Mastodon.

I tell them, no, for real, there's no uprising here. The average person in Florida really is that much different than you that you aren't wrapping your head around what they actually want the US to be like.

@sherrig312

Totally understand where you're coming from! I don't see it changing and hopefully we'll be full time out of Florida in the coming months.

I think a lot of people also don't understand that it's unlikely to change because there's practically no Democratic Party establishment here, so Republicans will only continue to gain until there's a counter-point in the politics.

@neilasaurus@mastodon.social

I wouldn't doubt that at all. I can speak to the teachers I know and that at the beginning of COVID most of them felt like going virtual was the right decision and quite a few didn't go back when just a few weeks later they were expected back in the classroom. Some more left the next school year as they were expected to do "hybrid" teaching where they had some students in the classroom and some online simultaneously.

The numbers would seem to bear that out, too, as in 2019 it was estimated the state had around 2,000 teacher vacancies that were unfilled and that's up to 5,300 this month.

@neilasaurus@mastodon.social

All of that is true and I think there's a couple important things to add.

One, they left the unemployment system in shambles on purpose. They said it out loud. The state pays out a fraction of its unemployment benefits.

Two, DeSantis actively recruited people who were unhappy with liberals in their current situations. For instance there was a program to recruit police from other states if they got fired for being anti mask or anti-vaxx in their state. There was later a program to recruit anyone who got fired for refusing a vaccine in another state. Those programs came with four-figure cash payments to move to Florida.

Know what DeSantis does? He comes through with a pay raise for teachers every single year. Know how many of those there were before him? Off the top of my head:

One for $2500 by Rick Scott over his 8 years. Charlie Crist vetoed one that passed the state legislature. Jeb Bush talked about it? Maybe went through with one? I’m honestly not sure on that one, but that gets you back to the 90's.

Are those 30% of teachers who identify as liberals mad? I’m sure they are. I’m sure you can even get quotes from a lot of them. I have this general discussion with friends who live on the west coast and other liberal areas all the time. It’s like a different world down here. It *feels* like there should be outrage. I get it. However, teachers down here aren’t largely ideologically against DeSantis and they’ve seen more raises the last four years than they’ve ever seen before. The population at large is even less liberal than the teachers and they think DeSantis is the greatest thing ever.

I guess my point is this. If you think there’s about to be an uprising against DeSantis in Florida it’s not going to come from some silent majority. They don’t exist. Point to Florida from wherever you are and say “Let’s not end up like that here” but, honestly, stop acting like the people here don’t have the government that the majority want. Florida has moved from a swing state to a solidly republican majority.

I mean, I agree with the outrage and all, but, look, the reality on the ground here is that even the majority of teachers love DeSantis across the state. I say this as the husband of a longtime teacher here who’s no longer in the classroom, but stays plugged into the local community of teachers. She's in a lot of teacher chat groups. There's no mass outrage. This morning the biggest discussion I saw amongst teachers was them talking about how kids are "rightfully angry and lashing out these days because the government came in and locked them down in their homes" years ago....for all of like two weeks, but, honestly, that’s the predominant discussion here.

The last data that I saw from the Florida teacher's union was that about half of teachers voted for Hillary and only about 30% of them identify as Democrats. There's not a ton of ideological outrage about any of this, frankly, and it's hyper localized. Know how many counties voted against DeSantis all of three months ago? 5. Out of 67. Two around Tallahassee, one at Jacksonville, one at Orlando and one north of Miami. Even Tampa voted for DeSantis this time.

I currently split my time between my off-grid life in the Appalachians that we're working on making a real full time homestead and suburban Florida. Every time we take a little time up north and then come back south I swear it's noticeably further to the political right. I'm going to preface this with the fact that I am vehemently anti-DeSantis, so don't come at me with any "DeSantis apologist" crap.

This is going to be unpopular amongst most of the people that I follow on here, but, I think it needs to be said, so I'm going to say it.

I see a lot of posts about Florida teachers here, and understandably so, there’s a lot of wild stuff coming from the Governor’s office. Unfortunately probably 99% of those posts come from outside of the state and I’m here to tell you something.

I don't know exactly how to say this, so I usually stay outside of political conversations here, but, calls for a teacher strike or all of the "I'm outraged at Florida" posts really reek of outsider echo chamber. I don't want to be the "Sure that sounds great, but" guy all the time, so I just don't get into it. They just aren’t representative of the people in Florida, though.

@urbanfoxe

Feel better soon!

Mask, ventilation and filtration. As much as possible for all if there's anyone else around.

@urbanfoxe

I debated whether it was even worth updating this thread, but, because you mentioned work rules and how pointless it all is, here we go...

She took Monday off of work and told her boss and HR that she had COVID. Both called her later that day and told her she had to be in at work on Tuesday. She's been in the rest of the week and at least as of yesterday she's still symptomatic.

Shocker, I know, but the husband got COVID, too. They convinced themselves that it wasn't the not isolating and just sitting 6' apart from each other and that he actually had it before then. He's also been at work all week.

@augieray

Thanks for the daily "check in with @augieray and find people to block" :)

In all seriousness, with as few of cases as are being actually reported and counted things like this, that are reporting ratios, are the only reliable data to make our "you do you" decisions with.

@CastlTrAstonDrs@med-mastodon.com

Great article. Thank you for sharing. That's one to bookmark and give a deeper read later.

@SourPatchAdult

They published this doozy once before it was retracted:

https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-05993-0

@ErinSandersNP @putrinolab

It's a good article from Nat Geo. I wish as scientists we were better at instead of saying "up to a year" we say "we tested for a year" or "at least a year" because none of the 12 patients suddenly had no spike protein anymore at 12 months.

The paper itself uses "up to" themselves in their abstract, but makes it clear in their results that they only tested for 12 months in the study:

"...blood samples were collected two or more times up to 12 months after their first positive result..."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.14.22276401v1.full-text

@tmorman

Because they're less interested in protecting people than they are making it equivalent to the flu. I think they've proven this time and time again. The newsworthy occasion will be when they start dealing with it with the seriousness it deserves.

@augieray @Turntwo363 @tashakoatolany

@drericding did say, himself, that he was joining Mastodon and linked to here in mid to late November. I forget if it was from his twitter or substack, but the mas.to one is his only one. I wish he would use it...

@chipmcdonald @fitterhappierAJ @knottedthreads I read article after article for a couple of days and in the end I think I have a much better handle on how it all works, so thank you both for responding!

I found this article to be a nice, simple summary of some of the ideas I encountered in the literature:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471490622000485

@knottedthreads @fitterhappierAJ

Thank you. I'm going to give this another read. It's been a while, but it is the second time Baric's work here has been pointed out to me recently.

If possible, I'd like to pick the brains of the more biologically inclined out there.

Piggybacking off of this article that @fitterhappierAJ posted today, this is something that's been on my mind for a long time now and I'm not afraid that I feel like I'm missing something.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00086-1

I've read about "original antigenic sin" aka imprinting for a year or two now in regards to COVID and vaccines. I believe I understand the basics and have long been under the impression that continually updated mRNA vaccines would give positive, but limited benefits.

Given what we know, should we see the bivalent vaccine as having over-performed thus far? Is there a real benefit to continually updated mRNA vaccines after all?

@neroden @windrunner @jeffgilchrist

This is my and my wife's go to and I sincerely wish we could normalize everyone wearing something like this. What a difference it would make.